Billionaire-turned-politician, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has not submitted a request to President Saakashvili with a request to restore his Georgian citizenship, according to one of his aides.

On November 17 Ivanishvili said that he was intending to submit an appeal to the president’s office within a week with a request to restore his citizenship; but no such request has been submitted. His team was reluctant to discuss the details, but it seems that more focus will be made on court proceedings.

On October 21 Ivanishvili appealed to the Tbilisi City Court with a request to annul the October 11 presidential order, which has stripped him and his wife of their Georgian citizenships. Late last month the court has refused to grant request for an interim measure to suspend the enforcement of a presidential order pending the court proceedings.

The first preliminary hearing into the case is scheduled for December 5, Ivanishvili’s one of the aides, Zakaria Kutsnashvili, told Civil.ge on Saturday.
 
If at some point Ivanishvili appeals to the President with a request to restore his citizenship, the authorities will have three months to decide whether to accept or reject the application.

The Georgian Public Defender’s Office said early in November, that it was looking into the case of Ivanishvili’s citizenship and would deliver its conclusions “as soon as the studying of the case is completed.”